Losing Face

From award-winning author George Haddad comes a stunning, thought-provoking story about facing up to your family and your future. Losing Face deals with timely issues around consent and inherited trauma.

Joey is young, indifferent. He’s drifting around Western Sydney unaware of how his passivity might lead him even further adrift, off the rails, into a violent crime.

Meanwhile his grandmother Elaine – a proud Lebanese woman – tries to save face and hold herself together in the wake of Joey's actions. In her family, history repeats itself, vices come and go and uncovering long-buried secrets isn't always cathartic.

This gripping and hard-hitting story reveals the richness and complexity of contemporary Australian life and tests the idea that facing consequences will make us better people.

About the Author

George Haddad is an award-winning writer and artist practising on Gadigal land whose work explores masculinities and the limitations of language in communicating truths. His novella, Populate and Perish, was the winner of the 2016 Viva La Novella competition and his short story 'Kátharsis' was awarded the 2018 Neilma Sidney Prize.

Haddad is currently a doctoral candidate and sessional tutor at the Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University.